Trashy Books

For pure Ameritrashiness from my 2008 reads (around 60 novels), my vote goes to Paul Kearney's The Ten Thousand. It's based on Xenophon's Anabasis, feels like alternate ancient history fantasy (but it's technically SF), has huge, brutal armed clashes, reversals of fortune, interracial sex, betrayal, bloodshed, and more. All of this self-contained in a compact 400 pages (although it appears that the author will pen a sequel due to its success).

I was pretty impressed with Sergei Lukyanenko's The Night Watch, and the next two books in the series are on my soon-to-be-read pile.

Good Omens by Gaiman/Pratchett was funny as hell (pun intended).

Asimov's Complete Robot was very entertaining and smart, if somewhat dated in places.

China Miéville's take on the Young Adult genre was pretty good in Un Lun Dun.

I also enjoyed His Dark Materials by Pullman, even if it got a little preachy for atheism near the end.

Eddings' Belgariad was pure juvenile crap in comparison and in general. Avoid like the plague.

Jeff Vandermeer tried his hand with media tie-ins in Predator: South China Sea. Combine a magic realism literary author with an ameritrash classic and you have a winner on your hands.

Patrick Rothfuss' debut The Name of the Wind, set in a medieval-fantasy world, was pretty successful at deconstructing the hero myth. I'll pick up the next installments as soon as they hit the shelves.

If you've lost faith in epic or secondary world fantasy but are still intrigued by the genre, then you might want to try R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing trilogy (The Darkness That Comes Before, The Warrior Prophet, The Thousandfold Though). Very gritty, very brutal and unforgiving world which mirrors our own. The trilogy follows the pattern of the First Crusade, so expect lots of sweeping battles and bloodshed. Fans were unhappy that many threads were left unresolved at the end of the third novel, unaware that the story would continue with a new trilogy jumping 20 years forward and starting in The Judging Eye, just released (and what I'm reading this week). Probably my best reads of 2008. The books might be hard to find in the US since the author is still looking for a publishing deal.


I really enjoyed Glen Cook's Black Company when I read the series a few years back. I found the style a bit hard-going at first, but that soon faded. The books get progressively weirder.

I just finished reading my first Gene Wolfe novels (Latro in the Mist, Soldier of Sidon), and I share the general sentiment. Practically incomprehensible endings, which may be due to the unreliability of the narrator. The first novel starts right after the events portrayed in the 300. Latro's a mercenary in the Persian army, he gets wounded in the head and loses his short-term memory (think of the movie Memento). Apparently this also gives him the ability to see the gods and creatures (nymphs, fauns, centaurs, etc.) of Greek/Persian/Egyptian/African mythology throughout the novels. Recommended if you're interested in that.

Thanks for the post Columbob- some great sounding stuff in there. I actually adore HIS DARK MATERIALS...too bad the movie was a fumble. Let us know if DAYWATCH actually explains anything that happened in the movie.

I haven't read LATRO IN THE MIST...I'm going to hit that sometime this year.

BLACK COMPANY is coming along...once the storyline materializes a little more clearly and the characters become more concrete it becomes more interesting. I kind of think the 1st person narration isn't the best approach for the story. Of course, I'm spoiled by Gene Wolfe and the tremendously brilliant 1st person narration in BOOK OF THE NEW SUN.

I picked up THE BLADE ITSELF...looks pretty good. It's after Cook.

Michael Barnes wrote:

BLACK COMPANY is coming along...once the storyline materializes a little more clearly and the characters become more concrete it becomes more interesting. I kind of think the 1st person narration isn't the best approach for the story. Of course, I'm spoiled by Gene Wolfe and the tremendously brilliant 1st person narration in BOOK OF THE NEW SUN.

I wasn't feeling The Black Company at first, except that it was like the Bizarro Tolkien take on Lord of the Rings. But finally I got it in the second book when it became apparent that Cook was doing more of a pulp/noir detective take on Tolkien. Hard-boiled, cynical, tough-guy posturing against a fantasy backdrop.

Michael Barnes wrote:

Pseudo- read LORD OF LIGHT and the first five AMBER books to get into Zelazny. I can see where you'd get the new agey-ness, but I wouldn't say it characterizes his work. AMBER is cool because it's more or less high fantasy but in a very 1970s way, if that makes sense to you. Corwin is totally a 1970s anti-hero and his presence in a story about magic, dimensional travel, and so on is pretty interesting stuff. LORD OF LIGHT is a masterpiece. BTW- I think you really ought to read the Elric books. It's not hard to see where GW got at least 75% of their ideas.

I'll look into those. I discovered the Sharpe novels a while ago (Sharpe's Rifles, Sharpe's Regiment, so on and so forth) and was astonished by the similarity in style between that and the Gaunt's Ghosts GW series. Some of the GW books are laughably bad(as are some of the pen-names), but the "blockbuster" series (Horus Heresy, Gotrek and Felix, Malus Darkblade, Gaunt's Ghosts etc.) are eminently readable and I like the setting.

Shellhead wrote:

I wasn't feeling The Black Company at first, except that it was like the Bizarro Tolkien take on Lord of the Rings. But finally I got it in the second book when it became apparent that Cook was doing more of a pulp/noir detective take on Tolkien. Hard-boiled, cynical, tough-guy posturing against a fantasy backdrop.

Sold.

I read Nightwatch when I heard about the movie. Never ended up seeing the movie though. The book was pretty mediocre at best. A cool premise that lacked the execution. It would make for a cool board game though. But I guess that's kind of what Shadow Hunters is.

Michael Barnes wrote:

Thanks for the post Columbob- some great sounding stuff in there. I actually adore HIS DARK MATERIALS...too bad the movie was a fumble.

Funnily enough, HDM was the last book before The Road to elicit a major response from me. Jawdropping stuff. So I was more than a little annoyed when I went looking for serious discussion of the book that all I found were teenage fanboys (and girls) who good only go "OMG, Lira is DA BOMB!!! CU L8R!!!!!".

I haven't read LATRO IN THE MIST...I'm going to hit that sometime this year.

Don't. For the love of God, don't. If could ever do you a favour to help you out, this is it. Don't read it. Avoid it like the plague. It's quite possible the most annoying book ever. I actually threw it across the room in disgust when I reached the end.